Here’s a question for you post-new critics out there: if a student completely misunderstands the historical context of a novel, but is otherwise on target, how severe should the consequence be to his or her grade? It’s something of a paradox: if a tree falls in imperial Russia, but the student thinks it was chopped down in Orwell’s Oceania, does it make an intelligible sound?

About the Center

The Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia was established in 2011 thanks to a generous gift from the family of NYU alumni Boris and Elizabeth Jordan. The mission of the Center is to make Russia intrinsic to all aspects of scholarly investigation: from history to visual culture, literature to economics, anthropology to politics.